


Learn to Fly

by kitlee625



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 16:52:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1517999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitlee625/pseuds/kitlee625
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was really no question as to what Melinda May was going to be when she grew up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learn to Fly

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from "Learn to Fly" by Foo Fighters.

She is four years old and waiting for her mother to come home. This business trip has been very long, long enough that Melinda barely remembers her mother coming into her bedroom to kiss her goodbye. Her grandmother though assures her that today her mother is finally coming home. Melinda helps Grandmother make up her mother’s bedroom, put fresh flowers on the nightstand, and make a nice dinner. She even lets Grandmother dress her in a nice sundress instead of her usual jeans and dirty t-shirts.

However, the hours tick away, the sun sets, and still her mother is not home. Grandmother tries to put her to bed, but Melinda refuses to go to sleep until she sees her mother. Finally though her stubbornness gives way to sheer exhaustion, and she passes out on her mother’s bed.

She is awoken by her mother’s soft touch and gentle words several hours later.

“Melinda. I’m home, sweet girl.”

“She cried herself to sleep again.”

Her mother strokes her cheeks, which are sticky with dried tears, and says, “Yes, Mother.”

“She misses you when you’re away. Why do you have be away for so long?”

“I don’t have a choice. This is my job.”

“She is your daughter. She needs you.”

Melinda can hear the anger in Grandmother’s voice, and she wants to tell them not to fight. Her mother is finally home. She opens her eyes and says, “Mommy!”

“Shhh, Melinda.” Mother smoothes her hair. “It’s so late. You should go to sleep.” 

“I’m not tired,” Melinda lies, but she cannot keep from yawning.

Her mother picks her up and carries her into her room. She helps Melinda change into her nightgown and tucks her into bed.

Before she leaves, Melinda is seized with a panic that her mother is going to have to leave again before morning. “Will you be here when I wake up?”

“Yes, darling. I’ll be here for a few days before I have to leave again.” She kisses her forehead. “Now go to sleep.”

Melinda wonders how long her mother will be gone this time, but she pushes that thought out of her mind. For now at least her mother is home.

*****

She is seven and waiting for her grandmother to pick her up at ballet. Grandmother is going to be furious that she got into yet another fight. She enrolled Melinda in ballet hoping that it would teach her grace and poise, but all she has learned so far is how mean little girls can be. The other girls think that Melinda is an oddity. Her mother is gone more often than not, and she does not have a father. Grandmother tells Melinda to ignore the other girls when they tease her, but she cannot pretend that their words do not hurt her. Sometimes she keeps her temper in check, but today she could not. 

She prepares herself for her grandmother’s anger, but is surprised when her mother comes to pick her up instead.

“Mommy!”

“Melinda. Fighting at ballet. You know better than to behave like a hoodlum.” 

She stares at the ground. She hates to make her mother angry. It feels like a waste of the little time they have together. “Yes, Mommy.”

“Your teacher said that you attacked four girls in your class.”

“They started it! They were saying things about you, about my father.”

“You don’t have a father,” her mother says quickly. “Those are just words, Melinda. They can only hurt you if you let them.”

Melinda nods.

“Your grandmother says that this is the third fight since you started ballet.” Her mother runs a finger across the bruise blooming along Melinda’s cheek and sighs. “Did you hurt the other girls as much as they hurt you?”

She shakes her head. “There were too many of them.”

Her mother scowls. “You shouldn’t resort to violence to solve your problems. If you react against every slight, you will make a lot of enemies. However, if you are going to get into fights, you need to know what to do.”

Melinda perks up. She has asked to take karate lessons, but Grandmother says that ballet is more appropriate for girls. “So I can take karate instead of ballet?”

“No. I want you to continue ballet. I’ll teach you Tai Chi.”

She smiles. Her mother might be angry with her, and this might be her punishment, but she cannot be unhappy about spending time with her mother, just the two of them. “What about when you have to leave again?”

“That won’t be for a while. I’m going to be spending more time in DC.”

Melinda’s smile grows wider. “Really? You’ll be here all the time?”

Her mother takes her hand and gives her a sad look. “Not all the time, but more than before.”

*****

She is ten, and her class is reading Harriet the Spy. When she shows the book to her mother and grandmother at dinner, Grandmother gives her mother a meaningful look.

“It’s rude to spy on people,” Grandmother says.

For extra credit they are supposed to keep a journal like Harriet. Melinda is not sure what she is supposed to be writing down. She does not have any siblings, and her mother and grandmother are boring adults. Grandmother spends all her time taking care of Melinda and playing Mahjong with her friends, and her mother is always working. After the first day she has only three things written in her journal, and she worries that she will get a bad grade if she does not have enough to fill up the pages.

If she is going to get a good grade on the assignment, she is going to need to write down every detail about the May household, no matter how small. She starts spending time in the living room or the kitchen instead of her bedroom so she can keep tabs on her mother and grandmother, and she carefully records everything that they do and say.

She notices things she has never noticed before about her mother. Her mother takes phone calls in the middle of the night and says strange things that don’t make any sense. She leaves the house right after dinner and does not come home again until after midnight. One night Melinda hears her opening her closet door several times in a row, and the next day she finds a gun hidden in a hat box.

By the end of the week she has collected so many notes about her mother, she has filled not one but two notebooks. She is going over them when there is a knock on her bedroom door.

Her mother does not look amused. “Melinda.”

“Yes Mom?”

“Show me your notebook.”

She hands it to her, and Melinda watches as her mother’s eyes widen reading through her carefully gathered notes. She flips through every page in silence, then says, “You can’t turn this in.”

“But it’s due tomorrow.”

“You shouldn’t spy on me.”

“But that was the assignment.”

Her mother sighs. “You can’t turn this in.”

Melinda puts her hands on her hips. “But why?”

“Because I said so.”

Melinda glares at her mother. “I’ll get an F if I don’t turn it in.”

“This is more important than that. Trust me.”

There is no one that Melinda trusts more than her mother. She is old enough to know that her mother is not a normal mother. Normal mothers are not gone for weeks or months at a time, with no way to contact her or even know when she is coming home. Normal mothers do not keep guns in hat boxes, or teach their daughters how to defend against multiple attackers, or what to do if terrorists take her school hostage. Even though she is tired of being in the dark, she is also is afraid of what the truth will be. Her classmates’ parents are CEO’s and lawyers, politicians and FBI agents. If whatever her mother does is more secretive and dangerous than those jobs, what could it be.

“Yes, Mom.” She hands her mother the second notebook, and they go into the kitchen where her mother drops them into a trash can and sets them on fire. They watch them burn until they are reduced to ashes.

*****

She is fourteen and waiting for her mother to get out of work. After school, when she does not have violin or ballet lessons, she takes the metro from her school in Bethesda to the National Mall. On nice days she studies outside, and on rainy days she goes to one of the Smithsonian cafes until her mother is able to drive her home. Everyone knows her there, and the director of the Smithsonian has arranged for her to get free drinks and snacks while she waits.

Today she does not have a lot of homework, and the weather is nice enough that she decides to go running around the monuments. It is spring, and the cherry blossoms are in bloom, so Melinda has to dodge a lot of tourists as she runs. She decides to run over to the Jefferson Memorial, which is far enough from the main path that there are fewer tourists. As she crosses the Potomac though she notices a lot of people in dark suits and sunglasses swarming around.

A man approaches her. “You can’t be over here, miss. This area is closed.”

“Why?” Melinda looks around. She notices that the people in suits are all armed, and there is what looks like a rocket launcher pointed at the Jefferson Memorial. “What’s going on?”

“That’s classified.”

“By whom? CIA? FBI?”

The agent stares at her. “Move along.”

Melinda gives the scene one last curious look before slowly walking away. She has not gone far before she hears something explode overhead. She feels debris raining down on her, and she instinctively falls to the ground.

One of the agents is shouting into a megaphone. “We have you surrounded! This is your last chance to give yourself up!”

Melinda gathers that whoever they are after is hiding out in the Jefferson Memorial because from the monument another ball of blue light shoots through the air and explodes against a van.

The woman with the megaphone directs the remaining agents to open fire, and the air is suddenly thick with gunfire. Melinda lies as flat as she can against the ground and wonders how she is going to get out of there. During a pause in the shooting she takes the opportunity to crawl quickly back towards the bridge. As she is crawling away she notices a man running from the Memorial also headed towards the bridge. He shoots several agents as he flees, and she realizes that she is the only person left between him and the bridge.

She should be afraid, but she moves on instinct towards him and kicks his feet out from under him. He crashes to the ground, and a second kick to his wrist sends his gun flying away from him. He looks shocked to have been taken down by a teenager wearing a Sidwell Friends gym shirt, and he lunges for his gun. Before he can get there there is the crack of gunfire, and he falls to the ground with a bullet hole in the back of his head.

Melinda looks up to see the agent who was shouting orders earlier. She is older than Melinda’s mother, but still looks intimidating.

“Impressive,” she says, and Melinda notes that she has a British accent.

“Thank you,” Melinda says.

The woman looks curious at her. “Who are you?”

“Melinda May.”

The woman raises her eyebrows. “That explains it.” She offers Melinda a hand. “Peggy Carter. Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Melinda gets to her feet. “What explains what?”

“I know your mother,” Director Carter says.

“My mother works for the Smithsonian,” Melinda says, but she knows from the look on Director Carter’s face that that is not true.

“We should find her. I believe she’s at the southeast corner. She’ll be worried about you.” As Carter leads her through the crowd, she says, “You’re a very impressive young woman, Miss May. Have you thought about what you’re going to do after high school?”

“I’m not sure.”

Carter pulls a business card out of her pocket and hands it to her. “S.H.I.E.L.D. could use someone with your talents. If you’re interested, call that number, and my secretary will set up an appointment so we can discuss it.”

She takes the card. “I don’t even know what S.H.I.E.L.D. does.”

Carter smiles. “We can discuss that at your appointment. But first, you should have a talk with your mother.”

*****

After that day on the National Mall, her mother tells her everything. How she has been a CIA agent since before Melinda was born, initially in the field but more recently coordinating operations across Asia. Her mother tells her that nothing has to change for Melinda. She can lead a normal life and have a normal job, but knowing what her mother has done to protect people, Melinda cannot imagine doing anything else.

Her mother accelerates her spy training. In addition to tai chi, ballet, and violin lessons, she starts taking Spanish and Russian, as well as learning to handle everything from swords and guns to throwing stars. Her mother tells Melinda that if she wants to be a CIA agent, she should either study international relations in college or attend West Point. She knows that she would go crazy spending four years studying in the library with spoiled, sheltered college students, and even the road from West Point to the CIA looks long and tedious, with no guarantee that she could ever get there.

She remembers what Director Carter said that day on the National Mall, and on a whim she schedules an appointment. Carter outlines S.H.I.E.L.D.’s mission and the roles that agents play, and it all is so exciting that Melinda can hardly stand it.

“What do I need to do to prepare myself for a job at S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

“What sort of position would you want?”

Melinda thinks about the options. She is not a scientist, and she does not want to be stuck in an office analyzing data. “A specialist, or a field agent.”

“You would need to go through training at the S.H.I.E.L.D. Operations Academy.”

“How do I apply for that? Do I need to go to college first, or the military?”

“Usually we do like our cadets to have proved themselves in some other arena. However, I believe in your case we can make an exception.”

“Will I be the youngest cadet?”

“In your class, yes, but we have accepted others your age. We accepted an eighteen-year-old young man last year, and he has done quite well. If this is what you want, you can start in the fall.”

“That’s it? Don’t I need to apply, or show you my skills?”

Carter smiles. “Believe me, Miss May, S.H.I.EL.D. is very much aware of what you can do.”

Her mother is furious when she finds out that Melinda has already signed up for S.H.I.E.L.D., but after the initial shock wears off, she resigns herself to her daughter’s choice.

She is eighteen when her mother drives her to S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy. They spend most of the trip in silence. Melinda stares at the scenery as it passes and wonders what the Academy is going to be like and if she is ready for this. 

They are halfway to the Academy when her mother says, “You can still change your mind.”

Melinda sighs. This is the last time she will see her mother for a while, and she does not want to spend the time arguing. “I want to be a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Mom. I’m not going to join the Agency.”

“I’m not trying to recruit you. But if something does happen, you can always call me. No matter what it is. I’m always here for you, Melinda.”

She gives her mother a small smile. “I know, Mom.”


End file.
